In the same way as there are "gros bonnets," otherwhere, there are large mitres in the Church. They are bishops who stand well with the Court, well endowed, clever, favorites of society, who doubtless know how to pray, but also how to solicit, not scrupulous about having a whole diocese waiting in their ante-rooms, connecting links between the sacristy and diplomacy, more abbés than priests, rather prelates than bishops. Happy the man who approaches them! As they stand in good credit they shower around them, on the obsequious and their favored, and on all the youth who know the art of pleasing, fat livings, prebends, archdeaconries, chaplaincies, and cathedral appointments, while waiting for episcopal dignities. While themselves advancing, they cause their satellites to progress, and it is an entire solar system moving onwards. Their beams throw a purple hue over their suite, and their prosperity is showered over the actors behind the scenes in nice little bits of promotions. The larger the patron's diocese, the larger the favorite's living. And then there is Rome. A bishop who contrives to become an archbishop, an archbishop who manages to become a cardinal, takes you with him as a Conclavist; you enter the rota, you have the pallium, you are an auditor, a chamberlain, a Monsignore, and from Grandeur to Eminence there is but a step, and between Eminence and Holiness there is only the smoke of the balloting tickets. Every cassock can dream of the tiara. The priest is in our days the only man who can regularly become a king, and what a king! The supreme king! Hence what a hotbed of longings is a seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many young abbés, have on their head Perrette's milk-jar! how easily ambition calls itself a profession! and perhaps it does so in good faith and in self-deception, for it is so unworldly.